The bookish, maniacal serial killer known as BTK said he saw his victims as nothing more than “objects” he used to fulfill his sick sexual fantasies.

Dennis Rader, in an interview being broadcast tonight, also said he didn’t see his arrest coming, even after resurfacing to taunt police after a 25-year silence with cryptic communications about the 10 people he slaughtered.

“I don’t think it was actually the person that I was after,” Rader said in an interview scheduled for NBC’s “Dateline.”

“I think it was the dream. I know that’s not really nice to say about a person, but they were basically an object. They were just an object. That’s all they were. I had more satisfaction building up to it and afterwards than I did the actual killing of the person.”

Rader, 60, who confessed to torturing and killing a string of victims in the Wichita, Kan., area between 1974 and 1991, was caught in February – a day he calls “Black Friday” – after resuming the eerie and chilling communications with police that ultimately led to his arrest.

A willing confession soon followed as have more details and insight into the mind of one of the most diabolical killers of a generation.

In the interview, conducted by neuropsychologist Robert Mendoza, who was hired by the defense team to assess Rader’s sanity, Rader bragged about his nickname and how it gave him the notoriety of other infamous killers.

“I embraced it,” Rader said. “Now I had a label on me. It was like the ‘Green River Killer’ and ‘Son of Sam.’ ”

Rader is scheduled to be sentenced next week.

Rader dubbed himself the BTK Killer because of how he would “bind, torture and kill” his victims.

“You have to have the control, which is the bonding,” Rader explained.

“That’s been a big thing with me. My sexual fantasy is of . . . if I’m going to kill a victim or do something to the victim, is having them bound and tied. In my dreams, I had what they called torture chambers. And to relieve your sexual fantasies, you have to go to the kill.”